Various Narnia drabbles: general
by oh sweet lily beans
Summary: Various Narnia drabbles. -- Gen. GENERAL WARNINGS: SPOILERS for Last Battle. Violence and death. Drabble 4 is AU.
1. Colors

**Colors**

Susan, G, dark.

Vague spoilers for _Last Battle_.

Susan disregards the meaning of the colors.

She leaves a deep yellow rose for Peter, because it reminds her of his lion's-mane golden hair.

Blood-red for Lucy, because it looks like her sister's cordial. Susan thinks maybe the similarly-colored rose will bring her back.

Off-white for Edmund, and she thinks it matches the color of his skin.

Except, she doesn't quite remember the color of Peter's hair, or Lucy's cordial, or Edmund's skin anymore. She can only guess.

(So she heeds the meaning of colors, buys a white and a red rose for herself, because she knows it means unity.)


	2. black metal

**black metal**

Peter-centric, PG, dark.

**Warning:** mentions of violence/war.

Crowns and swords are made of metal. So are dog tags and guns.

The crown he wears - wore - presented him as High King Peter the Magnificent of Narnia. _High - High King Peter_, Caspian had said, bowing low with his sword on the ground.

The dog tags he wears now identify him as _P. T. P_. _Pevensie_, he's called, but only when they bother to pay attention to him. The dog tags only important in death - no one looks at them otherwise, but he turns the metal between his fingers at night.

Swords are heavy, and work at his muscles. They fly through the air, he can hear them cutting the tension, the passion of battle. He can hear them crashing against skin and bone, red-wet. He tastes sweat and blood and victory on his tongue.

Guns are light, and rattle his bones when he fires. His entire body shifts a bit - he thinks something inside him changes each time - and he can only hear the cries of men. _Damnit, Pevensie, aim better_. He tries, but he can't. His vision is impaired by bright images, red blood and gray-black skies and brown mud. War.

Ancient symbols such as crowns and swords recall a time of knights and chivalry. Of honor.

Technology, guns and bombs, a symbol of progress. _Progress be damned_, he thinks. _For _this, and he pushes his boot further into the chest of the man below him, still breathing.

Chivalry is dead, and Peter dies with it.


	3. paint her thus

**paint her thus**

Peter, Susan; rated PG, dark

_Helen must needs be fair,_

_When with your blood you daily paint her thus._

- Act I, Scene I, lines 66-7, "Troilus and Cressida," Shakespeare

The men paint her red, bright blood red with horse-hair brushes, cut from the tails of the dumb horses they ride into battle.

Red blood white skin black hair: it paints a bright picture in Cair Paravel, sharp contrasts like 90-degree angles against the shimmering gold and soft blue hues of their clothes, of their skin, of their laughter. It hurts his eyes, dims summer's days, brightens winter's. Blaring sirens, red flags, sharp knives. Hurts so bad so bad, because this is his sister, always forever his sister, but she's never seemed so far away and -

He calls her Helen, once. She pauses, turns slowly.

"What was that, dear brother?"

Lightning boils, near-far.

"Susan, if you might find time to look over the treaty before it's signed - "

Bombs, deafening burn in his ears.

"Helen, you said. You think I am her, you think I am your scourge - "

Something strikes the tree outside. It falls between them.

"Susan, you know that isn't what I meant - "

It _isn't_ what he'd meant, no no no he tells himself. It _isn't_.

- but it's so hard to call her Susan when he knows that's not her name.


	4. your poisoned wine

**your poisoned wine**

Caspian X (mentions of Miraz), rated PG, dark.

**Warnings:** AU, non-canon death.

It must weigh at least as much as him.

Probably more.

It is heavy at his uncle's shoulder but he doesn't care; maybe, he thinks, it feels like a sword blade cold and hard, maybe it feels like the world round and burdensome. Maybe it feels like vengeance sour and sweet.

It feels like that to him.

He calculates how easy a motion it would be to slice across a plane, a plane interrupted by a soul. That's easily fixed, though; once he gets past the weight of it all, that is. It would all be red then, red like blood and wine and poison.

Caspian has eyes that stare down at him symbolically, terribly great and burning. Miraz has eyes, too, though. Eyes that stare up at his nephew - his brother's son - with concealed fear, with subservience hidden by a veil. _Don't_, they seem to say. _Please_.

Caspian can't, Caspian is human and just a boy and too-young too-innocent too-kind to do this.

Caspian has had a threat on his life, has had years of his life and his father and his mother and everyone he's ever loved taken away.

Caspian _can't_ do this.

He does anyway.

--

_Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time. An aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned._

- _Jane Eyre_ by Charlotte Brontë, pg. 35 (Bantam Classic)


	5. sunshine

**sun/shine**

Rated G, general (slightly dark).

He remembers the Witch's white face bright like the full moon, red blotches like craters, dark hair falling in her face like shadows. There is no man in the moon; only a monster.

He remembers Aslan's golden fur, amber eyes gleaming out of whites, ivory teeth shining in the dark wide warm roar.

He paints. His palette is full of colors but only few are used. They are all the same. Hues of gold, red, orange, brown.

Some black.

White.

He's painted her. She looks terrible and he always throws those paintings out. Not because they bother him - he could sleep millenia with her painting staring at his sleeping form - but because they are wrong, somehow. In learning to convey human features in art classes he's learned to make demons look innocent. Even amid her foul expressions, she looks beautiful.

Aslan always like fire, the sun. Edmund always paints him in the morning, like a bright start. A bright star gleaming even against all odds. The moon wanes, the sun is always strong, always and forever. Even in an eclipse he can see the sun shining behind the moon.

Edmund would rather paint the sky with stars, anyway.


	6. stars like liquid

**stars like liquid**

Rated G, general (slightly dark).

After the Witch leaves, the sky is again bright with stars. But Lucy hardly notices the white sea just hanging over her head.

Lucy notices the sun, dead on a cold slab of stone, his vast white-hot rays cooling. She can feel it when she pulls his fur eagerly between her fingers.

She is so tired from a lack of sleep that the tears when they come sting at her eyes, they make is painful to be alive. Painful to open her eyes, to look at Susan's blurred form, gentle Susan who is similarly wiping tears away hastily. It hurts them both, to cry.

The tears form bright white pointed stars in her eyes, paint her vision, blur and block out all else with their luminosity. _Oh_, she says, long and drawn out, voice in pain and thick with tears. Susan looks defeated, and Lucy knows that they have lost Aslan forever, that they have lost Narnia forever. The Witch has won.

The night fades, the sun arises slowly with the dawn, leaps over them swiftly. Lucy's eyes don't sting anymore, the stars are fading.

The sun has arisen. They've won.

The stars disappear altogether. It doesn't hurt to cry.


End file.
